


then I fall too

by mirrorless



Category: Naruto
Genre: A Bit of Fluff, Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence/Gore, Drama, Gen, One-Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:27:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23933803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirrorless/pseuds/mirrorless
Summary: I'm sorry,he thinks as the boy's dark head falls again to the stone beneath it, and his own dips back down into the water.I could not be there to spare you.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 40





	then I fall too

Kagami tumbles back into the void, limply splashing down into the seemingly endless sea of his Kamui - a true, agonizing fall from grace.

He's soaked through instantly as he bobs aimlessly on the otherwise tranquil surface, the water burning into the would-be mortal wound in his side with the fury of Amaterasu - though it's nothing compared to the chasm of anguish steadily widening in his chest.

Hadn't he been a faithful shinobi of Konoha?

Hadn't Hiru- _the Sandaime Hokage_ , successor of the Senju, publicly held _Uchiha Kagami_ high as his own sworn brother?

A lifetime of loyalty to those who, until only a moment ago, Kagami would have believed shared a bit of the same notions of fidelity towards him.

Truly, bitterly, finding Danzō's blade in his side had not been as shocking as it was disappointing; but the enraged, clawing grasp toward Kagami's face that followed when the man realized his dying comrade still had strength to flee using the only means (for the moment) left to him -

How long ago had his friend decided that the Sharingan alone were the only pieces of Kagami worth salvaging?

Those same cursed eyes burn as Kagami allows them to fall closed, weakly stretching a morbid hand toward the score in his clothing, the gash in his side - and a loud, piteous sniffle sounds in the stark silence of Kamui.

After a moment, the odd sound repeats, and with great effort, Kagami drags reluctant eyes open and attempts to focus them in the direction of a foreign grief.

Perhaps an arm's length from his head, and oddly unnoticed until now, a small stone pillar rises slightly out of the water, the ripples from Kagami's floundering body lapping lightly at its edges and -

Kagami squints in disbelief.

The blood loss must be affecting his already scattered mind; there is a _child_ staring back at him from the platform, certainly no older than five years of age, with tears rolling unchecked down his thin face.

Kagami absently notes the overlarge and worn clothing, uncomfortably certain that the little boy's physical characteristics denote him almost stereotypically to be of Uchiha descent.

_How the hell -_

They're in danger.

The desperate, clarion certainty slams into Kagami's foggy brain like a thunderbolt as he awkwardly tries to right himself.

If Danzō had been willing to, with spurious justification, slaughter for choice parts a full-fledged shinobi he'd once held dear, what chance would a neglected Uchiha _child_ stand -

There's another sniffle, a soft whimper, and Kagami, as though in a dream, casts an arm out in attempt to reach the boy - and gasps aloud, collapsing in on himself against the reblossoming agony in his side.

The last thing Kagami sees through the haze of fresh pain is a little hand reaching hesitantly back toward him as he finally keels over, floating facedown in the water.

He has to get out of Kamui, has to warn... _fuck it hurts_... a medic _\- Biwako-chan could -_ but, she's to marry Hiru- _Hokage-sama_... was this an order? _His_ order? Was _Kagami_ Danzō's true mission?

_Did Torifu..._

A low moan bubbles softly out of Kagami's throat.

Too much pain to think. To breathe. 

He decides to stop doing either - just for a moment, and gazes blearily into the depths.

Though the water near the surface is fairly clear, past a certain point he can only see shadows writhing in an endless dance of chiaroscuro beneath him.

Kagami dully watches as end of the slowly winding line of his diffusing blood reaches and then disappears into them - and the shadows _writhe_.

A dark outline emerges, floating face up as though to mirror Kagami's own listless form, but the finer details of its features are... not quite right.

The hair that frames the shadowed face is comprised of artfully suspended curls that Kagami's own flyaway mess could never hope to match, the jawline is entirely different, and _that_ nose has obviously never been on the receiving end of an Akimichi's miscalculated punch -

The mimic's eyes fly open, infinitely darker than any shade surrounding them, twin terrifyingly empty voids that crinkle lightly at the sides as the mouth slides open in a slow, rictus grin; one inky, grasping arm slowly reaches up toward Kagami as if in grotesque welcome.

Kagami wrenches back above the surface, and for some time the only sound in Kamui is his soft, pained gasps for air as he bobs again on his back atop the water.

Until they are set in rhythm with another's soft, pained gasps.

With dull dread, Kagami turns to see another, larger grey pillar, just barely breaking the water's surface, and atop it, a body.

A child's bloody, mangled body.

Kagami huffs out a burbled curse.

This must be the same boy, if only a bit older, and he's -

Snapshot memories of what enemy shinobi looked like after having been on the receiving end of Torifu's Multi-Size Technique, or one of Hiruzen's Doton jutsus flash through Kagami's mind's eye.

Most of the boy's body has been crushed. How he's even still taking in those wet, rattling breaths is beyond Kagami's comprehension.

Whatever tragedy has befallen this Uchiha child, Kagami was not there to prevent it, nor is there anything he can do to truly aide him now.

With any hope this horror is only just some terrible vision concocted by a dying mind.

As Kagami distantly wonders what will become of his own body when he finally perishes in Kamui, the boy's bloodied, mangled face somehow turns slowly toward him. 

That empty socket... the eye within was not maimed - it was precisely, intentionally removed.

_Stolen._

By who, Kagami has some dark theories, but what might have become of its twin, he cannot guess; the other side of the boy's face is a swollen, misshapen mess, oozing ichor with each ragged, keening breath - by every oath he's ever sworn, he would grant this child mercy, had he any strength at all to reach him.

 _I'm sorry,_ he thinks as the boy's dark head falls again to the stone beneath it, and his own dips back down into the water.

_I could not be there to spare you._

Giving in entirely at last to the persuasive rhythm of the gentle waves and the insistent demands of his mortally wounded body, Kagami allows his eyes to fall closed and his harried breaths to slow.

_May we both find peace._

  
There is a roar like raging thunder, so dreadfully familiar that Kagami comes to with a start, distantly surprised to find himself still languishing on the water's surface.

Kamui apparently will not allow him to drown, but he should have bled out from Danzō's strike long before now...

The rumbling peal sounds again, and for the first time during this entire ordeal, Kagami finds himself truly afraid; he has not heard this clamor since the night that Madara returned to the village for the final time, and it can mean only one thing -

_The Kyūbi is free._

Swallowing down his terror, slowly, carefully, Kagami focuses on trying to rise. There is a tight, warning pull in his wounded side, but nothing yet further debilitating as he manages to get his legs underneath him and kneel, his entire waterlogged body finally atop the surface after what seems like a lifetime submerged.

Lightning flashes ominously in the darkened sky above.

A crack of shattering stone, and Kagami is somehow unsurprised to see another pillar appear before him, the edges of the platform coming apart in jagged, crumbling chunks.

It can only be the young Uchiha who _stands_ in the middle, scarred face glaring out at his elder with a bloody Mangekyō Sharingan brimming full of rage and despair.

He's barefoot, dressed only in a simple, tattered robe, and his dark hair is now shoulder length, filthy and matted. A bizarre and striking crown of roots surrounds the boy's head - they seem to be growing out of his very skin.

_Mokuton?_

Those injuries Kagami witnessed before - not even _Hashirama-sama_ would have been able to save limbs so terribly mangled, and yet...

 _Someone_ has somehow pieced this patchwork child together.

Scarred lips snarl away from the boy's teeth; he throws his head back and his mouth opens wide as the Kyūbi's deafening roar resonates throughout Kamui, the force of it sending Kagami tumbling away from the disintegrating pillar and out further into the thrashing water until it and the boy are beyond his sight.

If any of this is _real_ , if there _is_ or is _to be_ another Madara, mad grief and calamitous misdirected vengeance resurrected in the likeness of this tormented child...

The water calms, and with a deep, steadying, surprisingly painless breath, Kagami is on his feet for the first time in what feels like ages.

As weak and entirely out of sorts as he feels, if he can conjure enough chakra, make it out of Kamui, find _some_ constant comrade...

He only realizes his hand has been unconsciously tracing down his wounded side when his fingers slip through the gash in the fabric to feel -

Nothing.

No searing flash of pain, no tangible trench in his flesh, no blood coating his fingertips when he pulls them away.

Incredulous, he rips the cloth open wider to uncover only pale, unmarred skin beneath.

_How?_

To his befuddled mind, it has only been moments since Danzō's betrayal, and he has never heard of Kamui being used to facilitate a miraculous healing.

This is the _strangest_ of days.

Kagami tilts his head back to stare up at the dark sky; a soft, disbelieving laugh tears out of his throat.

It's answered by another, though a bit harsher and more resigned, some distance behind him.

Kagami turns slowly, begrudgingly preparing to witness another horror, and it _is_ there; this, at last, _must_ be the end of the Uchiha whose life Kagami has witnessed play out in tragedy. The body that by now has to be older than Kagami's own is a pale husk, crumbling apart around a widening gut wound that Kagami can see clearly through out to the other side.

But the now white-haired man _smiles_ , contemplative and oddly soft - form fragile as fading frost, yet seemingly unbothered by his imminent demise as Kagami stands before him like a fool, exploratory hands still stuffed down in the tear in his top.

This is not Edo Tensei, but must tie it for creative cruelty.

The fate of the crying child in the first vision - if this scene is true, and has played out somewhere already, had anyone that might have held love for him been forced to watch as he turned to ash before their eyes?

"Strange," the man says, as though this whole damn ordeal hasn't redefined the word.

"The history books were practically emptied out onto the battlefield tonight, and yet..."

There is a truly unsettling crack as the man's head tilts, scattering more pieces of himself down onto the platform, into the sea of Kamui, and Kagami's body lurches of its own accord toward him.

Throughout these visions, he's not been able to offer the slightest bit of help or comfort. Whatever good or ill this adult might have done, Kagami remembers his earlier vow to the mangled child - if there is any mercy within his power to extend here, he will grant it.

He's running now.

"Uncle." 

The tone is gentle, and yet the dying man wields the address like a kunai.

_"Where were y-"_

Kagami's right foot makes contact with the pillar and the other Uchiha shatters completely, engulfing Kagami in a fine particulate that obscures his normal vision.

Mangekyō Sharingan burn on instinct as Kagami's left foot comes down on the platform - and finds nothing to support it.

Kagami tumbles face first into grass and earth; brief flashes of what he recognizes to be playground equipment distort in his vision as he somersaults across the ground, coming to a halt on his head with his ass reclining against the slope of a tree trunk. 

He's never been renowned for his grace, after all.

There's the screech of swings stopping; small sandalled feet drag in the dirt and then plod cautiously into Kagami's upside down line of sight.

With a soft grunt, he disengages from the tree and topples over, running a hand through his embellished hair as he sits up to greet his audience.

A little boy, even smaller than the very first time Kagami had ever seen him, though not quite as thin, with dark eyes and hair and tear-stained cheeks, regards him with wary curiosity, as though unsure if the dolt before him is some sort of actual threat.

Kagami swallows hard, and has to tear his gaze away for a moment as he tries to orient himself.

It's night, fairly late if his commotion didn't draw the attention of anyone but a neglected toddler (and there's a distant, unorganized anger there that he stores away for later use); Hiruzen's face still has no neighbor to its right on the distant mountain, but judging by the fact that the Sandaime's monument is now _completed_ , as well as the rise of outlines of several tall buildings he's never seen before, it's clear that some time has passed since he was last in Konoha.

Kagami stifles the urge to groan as he absently fishes a small branch from his hair.

Tobirama would be _so_ much better suited to all of this.

He freezes, hand still atop his head, as an insistent sniffle sounds in front of him. The child has not shifted his cautious attention.

"Ah. Hello," Kagami says, waving the leafy twig between his fingers in awkward greeting.

"I'm... here?"

The silly gesture earns him a shy, watery grin, and the little boy reaches out a hand, clearly intending to offer Kagami assistance in getting to his feet.

He's still weak from... _everything_ , but Kagami can feel a stubborn spark of strength returning as he rises, the _physical_ impact of Danzō's assassination attempt now only an unpleasant memory.

He'll deal with that, of course, keeping his bizarre arrival secret while ferreting out every bitter truth behind the betrayal, but for now -

"Thank you," he says politely to the child.

"I haven't walked in Konoha for so long, it seems I've almost forgotten how."

A soft giggle at that, and then he's being lightly pulled along, away from the playground and on toward a darkened residential street.

\- there are things more important to attend to than his own heart.

"Uncle," the boy turns back to him with a true little smile, innocent curiosity met with gentle admonishment, and Kagami feels something like hope strike in his chest -

_"Where have you been?"_


End file.
